AUTUMN’S ADVENTURES

I haven’t been updating as much lately because my brain is buzzing with a million different ideas and I haven’t been able to break myself from working on them to work on the blog. I apologize.  I probably don’t even have any followers anymore.  I’m also behind on posting pictures on my Flickr page.  I was good and did manage to get all photos from my 1.5 month travels onto Facebook so if you are friends with me you’ve probably already seen them.

To break it down in short form, this is where I was for 1.5 months and with whom:

• Cordoba, ARG - 10 days - with pal Bobby Carter
• Salta, ARG - 6 days - 4 days with Bobby, 2 days with Alexander.
• Tucuman, ARG - 3 hours - with Alex
• Rosario, ARG - 2 days - with Alex
• Buenos Aires, ARG -4 days - 2 days with Alex, 2 days with Alex and Shannon.
• Colonia, Uruguay - 1 day - with Shannon, Alex, David, Alex’s friend Abe and Abe’s friend Lee.

Of course I had to show Bobby, Alex and Shannon my new digs so they all came to visit me in Jujuy.  I took each of them to the north. I am beginning to be a really great tour guide of my home town!  I really liked seeing how they reacted to the places I took them. It was rewarding for me to show people new things.  Jujuy is a place of reflection and relaxation and I think I relayed that quite well to my friends.  They enjoyed a break from reality.

Now I am wiped out.  I’m happy to be done with traveling and back to working and a regular routine of yoga and the gym twice a week.  I’m not the type that enjoys living out of a suitcase for sure.  Since returning to Jujuy I have been a major hermit.  I stayed in my pjs and in my room for almost 2 days and 2 nights straight. I think the woman I live with thinks this behavior is a bit strange but I tried to explain it to her as best as I could that  I needed a super detox from all of that socializing and traveling — I needed to reconnect with myself!

Also, hanging out with Bobby, Alex and Shannon was really inspiring.  We talked about so many different things and I came away from those conversations with such great ideas that I couldn’t wait to get home and start working on them.  I felt that if I didn’t “download” my ideas from my head soon, it was going to explode.

Now I’m a bit more normal. I’m being social again after about a week of me time.  I’m trying to get out of the house at least once a day, whether it be for a walk around the city for exercise or for groceries, partially so the lady I live with doesn’t think I’ve gone nutballs crazy and chained myself to my bed for eternity.

I may go to Mendoza next weekend to visit Bobby again because he is there for an indetermined amount of time.  I really want to go when he is there because I like seeing my friends and it gives me a good excuse to go to Mendoza (other than the kickass wine).  We’ll see how I feel by Thursday and if I can handle another mini trip 14 hours south by bus…

Once Alex arrived to Salta and my friend Bobby had started making his way to Rio, I knew I’d be seeing this city in a different light.  I would adapt to Alex’s way of traveling and abandon the one I adopted with Bobby.  I was worried that Alex’s army training and general appeal for sweat-inducing activities would mean that we would be climbing mountains and probably hunting pumas or something and I’m not really the “active” traveler so-to-speak.  Hiking is not one of my hobbies nor is any type of extreme water sport.  I wouldn’t be using my computer as much as I had been these past few weeks and I prepared myself by packing my mini-leatherman, just in case I needed to pull ticks off my body or defend myself against a wild boar.

When I met him at the airport and saw him emerge from the gate all my fears fell to the back of my mind.  His giant smile and warm, social presence reminded me that he was just here to have a good time, no matter what we did.  The army didn’t harden him or make him into this super mountain expeditionist salivating for the peaks.  He was more excited to meet all the Argentine’s he could, as he was impressed by the ones he had met on the plane and in Buenos Aires in his short 24 hours in the country.  Apparently his experience as a New Yorker for one short year had left his bright and bubbly spirit jarred by all of the harsh and closed off people of the city.  Argentine’s were angels to him compared to what New York had to offer and he was overjoyed and highly impressed.

We didn’t waste much time as we grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed for the Teleferico of Salta.  The Teleferico is a set of cable cars that climb up the mountain Cerro San Bernardo.  The view is spectacular and the tickets are incredibly cheap ($20 pesos there and back).  The buildings on each end of the Teleferico that load the people into the cars were extremely cool with giant cranks and metal wheels of bright reds, and oranges.  I felt like I was inside a giant clock.  We roamed around the mountain and took silly pictures of ourselves.  We saw tons of giant spiders that had taken residence just above our heads along the trail.  Alex bought a postcard and then lost it.

Since I had already been in Salta for 4 days and was pretty burned out, we didn’t stay for much longer.  We made plans to head down to Cafayate to see as much of the north as we possibly could.

i fucking ate bunny rabbit tonight and drank 2 bottles of wine. it was so delicious beyond anything words can describe. i’m going back again tomorrow. BUNNY YOU ARE MY NEW MEAT! I LOVE YOU. and i’m a little bit drunk which is no way to write a post. i apologize now.

I don’t know what it is about traveling these past few weeks but I don’t feel like I’m seeing anything.  I’m not interested in going to museums and that seems to be the only thing to do in Salta aside from climbing the 1,000 steps to the top of Cerro San Bernardo or taking the lazy route on the Teleferic.  I went to the Hand Crafts Feria but all they had were “Regionales” which is something I can find right in Jujuy.  It was boring and small.

I also think I take the shape of the people that I am traveling with because I am so laid back and go-with-the-flow.  Bobby and I both work from our computers so we use siesta time here as an excuse to be on our computers for long stretches of time since nothing is really open.  I don’t mind this because my guilty pleasure is spending endless amounts of time online but I don’t know if I’m missing out on something in my travels because I am hovered over my 13” MacBook for a majority of each day.  Each of the towns that we have visited have been small and can be easily covered in a day or 2. We are also just doing the normal — going out to eat and drink.  I can do that anywhere…why spend money to do it somewhere else if there isn’t a supplemental unique travel experience?

I thought I would enjoy these travels for the traveling more than the normal day-to-day on my computer but I don’t.  Maybe I am just not impressed.  The things offered in each city just don’t appeal to me and the architecture only wows me for a hot second.  I mean, Salta is way nicer than Jujuy for sure.  It’s more modernized and it does have some very beautiful buildings but those are just my surroundings, it doesn’t actually provide me with anything to do.  Aside from computer time I am blowing through my money by buying super delicious and expensive protein-rich meals.  I don’t so much mind this but I am afraid to look at my bank account when I finally settle from my travels.  Anyone wanna throw me some more work, *nudge, nudge*?

On the positive side, I think the quality time with Bobby is well worth the trip by far.  He and I share lots of similarities in our personalities so we are constantly bouncing ideas off of each other, inspiring each other and making each other laugh.  No stupid colonial building or horse ride through the mountains can beat that.  I feel much closer to Bobby and our friendship has definitely gone from “super cool aquaintance” to “great friend”.

On Tuesday Alex arrives and he is more of an adventurer so I don’t see myself on the computer much at all.  We’ll probably do Cerro San Bernardo which will be cool I’m sure.  I’ll show him the north (3rd time I’ll be going there this month) and then we’ll spend a day or so at my house.  From there who knows where we will go but I can’t imagine that he will want to sit still in my house and do nothing.  A trip to Bolivia or Chile is highly likely with him.  Maybe those places will provide more of a worthwhile travel story but for now, sorry I’m so “Debbie Downer”.

I was up at 7am this morning and I have to admit it felt like I was facing death’s door.  I haven’t had to wake up that early in so long — I didn’t even wake up that early when I worked in the office at IHS.  My body just doesn’t agree with the early hours of the day yet.  Anyway, I got up early because I was supposed to go to a post graduate class at the university with professor Alabí but it got cancelled because there was a problem with the buses and students couldn’t get to the school.  I got dropped off by car so I didn’t get the message until I arrived at Alabí’s house.  Alabí doesn’t have my cell phone number yet so she couldn’t call me to tell me I didn’t need to wake up at the ass crack of dawn. Oh well.  We ended up having our normal class for an hour and then I went to Carena for a few hours.

I took a two hour nap when I returned home and then brewed myself a cup of instant coffee with powdered milk and powdered chocolate.  That is as good as it gets here for coffee but I don’t really mind it.

Tonight I went to Salta with Gabi because she had to go there to do things for her business.  We took a taxi to another type of taxi that cost us 20 pesos one way.  That is a pretty reasonable price considering the trip is about an hour long.  Papá Mercadal told me those taxis are illegal but I didn’t know that until after I got back.  Not that I care anyway because most things that are illegal shouldn’t be illegal in the first place.  We arrived around 9:30 - 10 and when Gabi was finished with her important work stuff we walked around to find food.  I’m getting a little better with my conversational castellano and I am understanding a lot more that I did a few days ago.  Gabi talks a lot and asks me a ton of questions so she is really making it easy for me to adapt faster.  I decided today that she is my new bestie in Jujuy.  She is definitely bestie material.  We got back to Jujuy around 2am and people were still hanging out at the movie theater near her work.  Argentines are definitely night owls…